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NO S T ORK W I T H O U T A WEDD I NG “ MAY I come to the parsonage to- morrow and have a talk with you?” the dark-haired teenage girl asked. “ I have something I want to discuss with you,” she said. “ Certainly you may,” I replied, and we set the time. At the parsonage I asked the pas tor about this young lady. “ Oh, was it Linda? [not her real name]. Must have been. . . . She’s one of our fine young girls . . . she’s in trou ble with a no-good fellow,” he replied a bit hesitantly. Then he unfolded a bit of the case telling how Linda had since come back to the church, asked forgiveness of God and the people and had been restored to fellowship. Everyone was now anxious to help her as she faced this ordeal, alone. Linda’s story was not very differ ent from many another. She told of loving a fellow, who quit her be cause of parental interference. She SEPTEMBER, 1965
by D r . William S. Deal
started going with “ this guy, whom I didn’t know very well,” to try and bring around Jim, whom she really loved. Maybe he’d be jealous and would return to her, she reasoned. But this new fellow had other in tentions. On a very early date he took her to a secluded spot and forced the issue with threats. She yielded — now, the dreaded results! But this is not all the story. Linda had been going all out with Jim, before, hop ing in this way to win him. She hated the “ other guy,” but it was too late. Her yielding to him had been made easier by her sinful indulgence with Jim. One could multiply such cases, many of them in religious circles. The moral conscience about sexual indulgence is pitifully low among our young people. For example, while I was counseling Linda, she said, “ But I’m not a had, girl!” “What do you mean, you are not a bad girl? Aren’t
you going to have a baby out of wed lock, and isn’t that sort of bad?” I asked. “ Oh, I mean, I didn’t do anything so bad. I loved Jim. I hated the guy who forced me. I mean, I know girls in high school who go out with two and three different fellows the same night! That’s what I call being a bad girl.” In other words, the fact that she loved Jim made sexual indulgence all right to her. Here was a 20-year-old girl, reared in a deeply spiritual, evangelical church, with this kind of outlook on so serious a matter. Linda was dead in earnest. She was not hypocritical. Has someone, somewhere, failed youth in this crucial age? Have the ministry and the Sunday sch oo l teachers failed to enlighten them about these matters? Has a “ false modesty” hindered, if not almost completely shut out our ministry to 13
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